When Shadows Have Called
by HammerOfElohim
Summary: There is evil in the deepest, darkest places of the world. It has existed since before the dawn of time, seeking to wreak havoc upon Humanity. Armed with their faith and the Light, the Order seeks to hold back the tide of screaming shadows...


I was born hearing the vibrant scream of Hell.  
  
My parents used to wonder, when I was only a few years old, why I was always crying. They didn't understand it. I would cry when I wasn't hungry, I would cry when I was clean, I would cry when one second before I had been happily playing with my toys in front of them.  
  
They didn't understand it. The doctors didn't understand it.  
  
When I grew old, old enough to tell them why I was always crying, they grew afraid. They took me to the mental doctors. I spent hours sitting on a cushy chair in a room that was bright and happy, filled with stuffed animals and toys, telling some old bald man what I saw. He would always nod, write something down on a notepad, then smile and ask me some more questions. I would always answer his questions. Didn't matter what they were.  
  
Nothing happened. I still saw what I saw. My parents took me to doctor after doctor, from the time I was three to the time I was nine. They spent thousands of dollars on them; psychologists, counselors, psychiatrists, even neurologists every once and a while. They all said the same thing; they had no idea what was wrong with me. There weren't any neurons firing in my brain that shouldn't be firing. Besides the fact that I saw what I saw, I exhibited all the signs of a 'normal' child.  
  
But knowing that I was a normal child didn't stop me from staying in my parent's room every night with the lights on in every single room of the house.  
  
Even that didn't stop it, sometimes.  
  
When I was nine, though, something happened. I'd seen it at school for the first time and told my teacher. I don't know why she got so angry. I was saving her from it. I didn't want it go get her. When I saw how it was latching onto her, and warned her about it, she screamed and yelled at me for telling lies.  
  
It was holding onto her through the affair she was having with the principal. I told her she should tell her husband, I told her that would make it go away.  
  
She didn't believe me.  
  
I was expelled. By then my parents were desperate. They would have been willing to try anything to find a cure for whatever was the matter with me. Well, almost anything. They were atheists. They didn't believe me when I told them what I saw. They didn't believe it was real. They didn't want to believe it was real. They kept looking for a logical, scientific explanation.  
  
My parents and my psychologists could heal me because they didn't really believe me.  
  
But I knew it was true. And so did Dr. Floris.  
  
He didn't charge my family anything for seeing me. Said it was a special case because, when he'd seen how everything else had failed to help me, he wanted to take the challenge. I thought he would be like everyone else. I thought he wouldn't be able to help me.  
  
But he could.  
  
When I told him what I saw and what I heard, inside his massive home- office, he smiled. When I was done talking, he stood up. Behind his desk was his library; it was the size of the entire wall. He rummaged around a bit before pulling a huge and dusty book off the shelf. There was a symbol on the front; a cross, with blood pooling at the base of it.  
  
He opened the book. There were pictures inside of it.  
  
Pictures of what I saw.  
  
He told me then, Dr. Floris. He told me that there were only a few others who saw it as I did. He said that most Humans went about their daily lives totally ignoring it; others believed it and fought against it, but they still couldn't see it as clearly as I could  
  
He told me I had to do something. He told me what it was.  
  
He gave a name to what I was seeing.  
  
He told me how to stop it.  
  
I can still remember the first time I shut it up.. I was walking down the street, back home from my new school when I heard it. The scream, the howl. It started quiet but then grew to a huge roar as it surrounded me. I stopped walking. My heart was pounding. I wanted to run, but something made me stop. I had to see if Doctor Floris was right. So I whispered the words he had told me to say. "Our Father, Who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven..." By the time the prayer was finished, they were gone.  
  
I was elated. I went back to Dr. Floris and told him all about it. He was overjoyed. He explained to me that was the only way to fight it; the only way to fight it was to surround myself with its Enemy. I had to fill myself up with its Enemy's glory, for if it saw its Enemy in me, it would strike fear into its heart.  
  
I brought its Enemy into my own heart, that day. The enemy of my enemy became not only my friend as I knelt inside Dr. Floris' office, but also my king and my God. I was only nine, and I didn't fully understand the magnitude of what I was doing. But I did know one thing; the blood its Enemy had shed thousands of years ago would be my unbreakable shield.  
  
Dr. Floris told me that God had given me a gift. He told me that I would have to use it. Though he couldn't teach me, he knew people who could. I was worried about what my parents might say. They didn't believe in God; they thought what I saw was merely a hallucination. 


End file.
